Alan Archibald is unsure whether or not he will be able to strengthen his squad with the addition of Chris Erskine in January.

The Jags moved quickly to tie up their former favourite on a pre-contract agreement last week, with the Dundee United man set to arrive at Firhill in June.

With Ryan Edwards on international duty and with Ryan Stevenson having left to join Ayr United though, Archibald has earmarked attacking midfield as a priority area to strengthen during this transfer window.

The early arrival of Erskine could potentially solve that problem, but while the Jags boss is keen to land his man now, it is unlikely that Thistle would pay a fee for his services at this point.

Archibald concedes that the matter is out of his hands.

He said: “Chris Erskine coming in this month will be down to Dundee United, it’s totally down to them.

“We totally respect that he’s their player. We went down all the right channels to secure him for next season and spoke to them, so everything was above board.

“Unless they wanted to put him out – and it’s something we’re open to – then it will be up to them.

“He’s done well for us here and we know the type of lad he is, that was the reason we got it done as quick as we could.”

In the here and now, Archibald’s immediate priority has been to refocus his players on what made them so difficult to beat before Dundee brought their fine run of form to a shuddering halt on Saturday.

He is sure that his players are self-aware enough to realise that the dip in their standards was unacceptable, and he has backed them to get back on track against Inverness after a frank meeting to clear the air.

“We had a bit of a post-mortem after the Dundee game and we watched it back with the lads on Monday morning,” he said.

“They’re an honest group and we’ve spoken about it. It was just the basics, we never done the basics well enough.

“I watched the whole game but we watched the first-half with the players and picked some key areas out of it.

“It wasn’t a punishment, it’s sometimes good to hear what the lads think as well.

“They’re out on the pitch, it’s easy for us to stand at the side and berate them, so you want to hear their thoughts on it.

“Ultimately we’ll tell them what we think as well, but it’s good to hear their opinions.

“It’s important to get their feedback, take it all in and then tell them what we think is actually right!

“What it showed us is that we’ve got to do the basics.

“You know in any football match you need to start the game well and we didn’t do that, and it was too much to recover from.

“Credit to Dundee, they played well, but a lot of their goals were hand-fed to them from a Partick Thistle point of view.

“I don’t think we had enough guys playing anywhere near their maximum, whereas over the twelve games before that we did have.

“We’ve had seven or eight guys all at the top of their games, but on Saturday we were nowhere near it and that was key.

“I think the players are well aware of that. We’ve been on a good run and the players know how we got good results – by working hard and cutting out the errors.”